Just a day after announcing that he was strongly considering a presidential run as an independent in 2020, former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz was greeted by a protester at a campaign-style event who wanted him to know that he was an “egotistical billionaire a**hole” who was going to get Donald Trump re-elected. By Wednesday, former Hillary Clinton operatives had already launched an effort to organize more disruptions and protests targeting the not-radical-enough Schultz.
Adam Parkhomenko, the founder of activist group Ready for Hillary and a Clinton campaign staffer, has launched the unequivocally named website, ProtestHoward.com, to make sure Schultz gets to meet more indignant hecklers denouncing his obscene financial success and selfish plans to ruin the Democrats’ hopes of dethroning Trump.
“As Schultz embarks on a monthslong national tour, one well-known Democratic strategist wants to make sure he faces more protesters like the one who interrupted him Monday night in New York City by shouting, ‘Don’t help elect Trump, you egotistical billionaire a******,” NBC News reports.
“Howard Schultz has spent a lot of time in the last 24 hours telling America that ideas from women are un-American,” said Parkhomenko, NBC reports. “He’s as dumb and out of touch as his idiotic indy bid would suggest.”
Parkhomenko’s site has very simple and direct “action” and “mission” goals: “Protest Howard Schultz” at all of his upcoming campaign events in order to “Save Democracy.”
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The hope is to produce more disruptions, like the one Monday at Schultz’s event at a New York City Barnes & Noble in which a heckler shouted, “Don’t help elect Trump, you egotistical billionaire a***hole!” and “Go back to getting ratioed on Twitter! Go back to Davos with the other billionaire elites, who think they know how to run the world!”
Though Schultz describes himself as a “lifelong Democrat,” and he’s given nearly $200,000 to the party, he says that both parties have become so embroiled in “revenge politics” that they are failing to offer real solutions and move the country forward.
The Democratic National Committee is not happy about his rejection of the party, issuing a statement this week stressing that their primary focus is on taking down Trump, “and anyone who shares that goal should vote for the Democrat nominee in 2020,” NBC notes.
Thus far, Schultz hasn’t been shy about criticizing his potential contenders from the Democratic Party, including Sens. Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren. As the Daily Wire reported Tuesday, the public feud between Schultz and Warren has already gotten ugly.
“When I see Elizabeth Warren come out with a ridiculous plan of taxing wealthy people a surtax of 2 percent because it makes a good headline, or sends out a tweet, when she knows for a fact that is not something that’s ever going to be passed, this is what’s wrong,” Schultz told NPR in an interview Tuesday. “You can’t just attack these things in a punitive way by punishing people.”
In response, Warren has taken to Twitter and offered statements to the press slamming Schultz, repeatedly describing him as a “billionaire” like it’s a dirty word. “What’s ‘ridiculous’ is billionaires who think they can buy the presidency to keep the system rigged for themselves while opportunity slips away for everyone else. The top 0.1%, who’d pay my #UltraMillionaireTax, own about the same wealth as 90% of America. It’s time for change,” Warren wrote in a series of tweets Tuesday. “Billionaires like Howard Schultz & Michael Bloomberg want to keep a rigged system in place that benefits only them and their buddies. And they plan to spend gobs of cash to try and buy the Presidency to keep it that way. Not on my watch.”
Related: SHAPIRO: The Democrats Have A Serious Radicalism Problem, And Kamala Harris Just Proved It